Dave Hauck moved to the Downtown Eastside 20 years ago to be closer to the medical clinic that treats his hepatitis C, the food kitchens, and the free movies at the Carnegie library.

The 63-year-old is grateful for these services, but would happily move to another neighbourhood if it offered the same support for a person who has struggled with drugs and alcohol.

“I think (the services) should be spread out, diversified, so people can be in different communities,” he said.

He knows residents of other neighbourhoods have protested social housing coming to their area.

“There’s too many people here with low income. Put people out in Marpole, Richmond, Burnaby. Let the neighbours complain.”

But Julie Price, who moved from Prince Rupert to the Downtown Eastside eight years ago to be closer to family, is happy living in a B.C. Housing building close to all the services. She has no interest in leaving the neighbourhood, despite being worried at times about drugs and prostitution.

While cuddling her kitten Selena, 54-year-old Price said she felt at home in the Downtown Eastside, had a good support system, and relied on the access to free or low-cost necessities like food and clothing.

And therein lies the issue for the future of the Downtown Eastside.

Experts argue Vancouver has an unusual cluster of service agencies and social housing in one tiny area and these should be spread out to create other communities where marginalized people can feel supported and accepted.

But there are people like Price who will want to remain in the Downtown Eastside, which has been home to low-income people for decades.

The Vancouver Sun compiled, for the first time in recent history, a list of all service agencies and subsidized housing operations in the Downtown Eastside. We counted 259 in this small area of Vancouver — home to just three per cent of the city’s population — with a combined revenue of $360 million in 2013.

If local governments decide to move Downtown Eastside agencies to other parts of the city or region, it is vital that they remain open until the replacement is operational, said Jennifer Wolch, dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If there is a plan to improve access in other parts of the city, for example, it is really important not to use that as a pretext for allowing development forces to push out the existing service hubs,” said Wolch, whose research focuses on urban homelessness and the provision of services to the poor.

“That’s crucial because the people living in these kinds of neighbourhoods do really depend on each other and the service providers.”

Wolch advocates smaller “service hubs” in various communities, where clusters of agencies are situated close together for easy access, so clients don’t feel alone while using them.

She said city planners will always face opposition from residents who don’t want social agencies in their neighbourhoods, but added there are recent examples — such as the Step Up on Second housing development for people with mental illness in Santa Monica — of community opinions being changed.

“There are clearly very successful models of services who have overcome fairly aggressive opposition, and they’ve done that working with the community,” Wolch said.

“There had never been a comprehensive community plan for the Downtown Eastside, which is kind of astounding,” she said.

The plan calls for more than 6,000 affordable housing units to be added — 4,400 units of social housing and 1,650 rent-subsidized units — to the Downtown Eastside’s existing 6,700 social housing stock over the next three decades, to respond to the expected increase in need.

Is that too much social housing and related services to add to this already crowded neighbourhood?

“It’s not a new discussion,” Reimer readily acknowledged. “The debate has been going on for many decades now, and intensely over the last 20 years in the Downtown Eastside.”

After hundreds of meetings, those who worked on the plan reached a consensus that the city needs to create 9,400 new affordable housing units by 2044, with two-thirds going in the Downtown Eastside and one-third into the rest of the city. They reached this conclusion using a tool that polled about 600 DTES residents.

Not everyone is happy with all the pieces of the long, complex plan, including putting more mixed-income housing into the neighbourhood.

“Most people, I think, agreed that revitalization was desirable, and building a vibrant, complete community that includes different incomes,” Reimer said. “Then there were others who felt that … any amount of what one person might call revitalization, to another person is gentrification that displaces people.”

Scott Clark, who heads the native group ALIVE, believes in the revitalization of the community, and does not think one more unit of social housing should be stuffed into the Downtown Eastside.

“People can’t afford to go elsewhere, so they are literally forced into the Downtown Eastside,” Clark said. “We need to take on the NIMBYism of Vancouver’s other 23 communities to start decentralizing housing and other support services for our vulnerable population.”

The B.C. Housing ministry, Clark noted, has said it will not fund these new housing units, so they may never come to fruition. “What we do need the province to do is to work with the city on decentralizing housing and other services,” he added.

For example, all community centres in the city, not just the three in the Downtown Eastside, Clark argued, should provide affordable daycare, recreation programs, and other activities to benefit low-income families.

But that is always a hard sell outside the DTES boundaries. Just last month, a developer offered Richmond council a $4.6-million cash-in-lieu contribution to sidestep a requirement to build 29 low-market rental units in a new complex near the Richmond Olympic Oval.

Mike Harcourt, who also believes it is time to start placing more housing and services outside the Downtown Eastside, is pleased about other elements of Vancouver’s plan for its oldest neighbourhood.

“When they approve the rezoning, it is going to give us the stability, particularly in the Oppenheimer Park neighbourhood, to take the speculation out of that area by only being rental,” said Harcourt, former B.C. premier and former Vancouver mayor.

He believes the city is within three years of getting most people who are homeless or precariously housed into more stable lodging. Then, perhaps, it will be time for social agencies to revamp their focus from offering free food and other daily support to DTES residents, to more long-term issues like education and jobs.

“I think we are into a transition area — and either people can be hysterical about it or they can go about it rationally.”

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The future of the Downtown Eastside: Should they stay or should they go?

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